Technical limitations: Apple imposes strict guidelines on what a Mac app can and can't do, including hard limits on how much apps can 'talk' to each other.In a blog entry, Sketch developer Bohemian Coding said that there were several reasons why it took the app off the Mac App Store: And now, even Sketch, which Apple once gave a design award and which routinely topped the Mac App Store charts, is going back to selling the software directly from its own website.Īnd it's not because of the recent Mac App Store glitch that left users without access to their purchased apps. Plus, Apple takes a 30% cut of iPhone and iPad apps, and wants a piece of the action on Apple OS X too.īut it hasn't really worked out well. If successful, the Mac App Store would give Apple tighter control over what software can and can't run on the Mac. The Mac App Store, introduced in January 2011, was designed to bring all the advantages of Apple iOS apps back to the desktop, including easy updates and a simple, unified buying process. It's just the latest in a string of high-profile departures that should have Apple worried. Sketch, a popular Mac app that lots of designers actually liked better than Adobe Photoshop, has left the Mac App Store, according to a blog entry. Now we have 25 people working on it, testing on eight or nine different platforms, in 13 different languages.”ĭevelopers say that while software giants like Microsoft and Adobe are able to persuade users to pay monthly or annual subscriptions, there would be resistance to extending this model to a whole range of apps.įor pro apps already ported to iOS, the same issues mean that there is not much incentive for developers to optimize for the iPad Pro unless they see widescale adoption of the device.Īnimoto founder and CEO Brad Jefferson says the company is holding off, for now, on making a version of the app optimized for the large screen or the accessory Pencil of the iPad Pro “ Let’s see what adoption of the Pro ends up looking like.The dialogue box that Sketch users get letting them know it has discontinued the Mac App Store version. “The first version of Paper, we had three people working on it. “Maintaining software is more expensive than building it in the first place,” FiftyThree co-founder and CEO Georg Petschnigg says.

Second, where a developer supports a complex app over a long period of time, paid upgrades make that viable, something that isn’t supported by Apple on the App Store. “So to be sold through the App Store, we would have to dramatically lower the price, and then, since we’re a niche app, we wouldn’t have the volume to make up for it.” “ Sketch on the Mac costs $99, and we wouldn’t dare ask someone to pay $99 without having seen or tried it first,” said Bohemian Coding co-founders Pieter Omvlee, referring to the app aimed at professional graphic designers. Free trials are the usual way to achieve this with desktop apps, but the App Store doesn’t allow them to offer the same option for iOS apps … First, pro apps are expensive, and users want to satisfy themselves that they are worth the money before they pay. The launch of the iPad Pro has brought the issue front and center, with a number of developers sharing their thoughts with The Verge. Developers of pro apps have long complained that Apple’s App Store policies are a barrier to them creating iOS versions of popular Mac apps.

Mac apps for developers 2015